


Dirty Jobs: Wasteland Edition

by Sir_Thopas



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2, Fallout 4
Genre: Apply Now!, Gen, Jobs of the Post-Apocalypse, Slice of Life, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 12:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16429094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Thopas/pseuds/Sir_Thopas
Summary: Let's face it: not everyone can be a raider, a farmer, or a trader. There are hundreds of jobs that need doing to make this post-apocalyptic world turn. Explore these amazing career opportunities today! All one needs is the right attitude and a fortified stomach!Many of the jobs described here have their origins in the pre-Industrial Age and were eventually replaced as new technology came along. But after the War, these jobs would all need to be resurrected in order for society to function again. Some of these jobs are... really gross, but they were all vital at one point in time or another.





	Dirty Jobs: Wasteland Edition

**Pure Finder**

Gene was well-known among the smaller settlements as a dog breeder. Dogs were useful animals to have around. They sniffed out molerat nests, alerted their humans to any raiders or super mutants lurking nearby, but most importantly (in Gene’s humble opinion) they provided love and companionship. But selling dogs wasn’t his primary source of income. In Diamond City, he was known as Gene the Guy Who Sells Dog Shit.

Leather was a big business in the Commonwealth. It was used to make nearly everything, from boots to harnesses. Dog shit played a necessary part in purifying the leather and making it flexible enough to shape. Gene had a small house not far from Diamond City and he spent most of his week in idle comfort. He cooked, he read, he played with his dogs, and every time one of those dogs squatted Gene would be right there behind it, ready to scoop up the freshly delivered roll and dump it into a bucket. He had tried using gloves in the beginning but it was difficult to keep them clean, especially once the shit had dried and crusted he would just end up making even more of a mess every time he tried to put them on. It was easier to wash his bare hands. 

On Sundays he’d take his buckets into Diamond City, dog in tow. The tanners operated out of Choice Chops. They’d give Gene 30 bottlecaps a pound. He had watched them once while they worked. They would preserve the brahmin hides with salt, and then soak them in urine to weaken what few hairs the radiation hadn’t already taken until they could be scraped off. They walked barefoot around and around in tubs, treading on the leather in a mixture of urine and water. They would do the same thing with the dog feces, pounding it into the leather with the soles of their feet to make it elastic enough to use.

* * *

**Gong Farmer**

Toilets were hard to come by in Diamond City.

Regulation stated that there would be two outhouses for every block. Lines were always long, which led to a lot of people using old cooking pots as guzunders and emptying them out directly into the street. But that was a problem for the street cleaners, like Sheffield and the other dregs of Diamond City. Janice was far too important to bother with that. She had a thriving business, earned more caps in a single night than most folks in the upper stands earned in a month. 

It didn’t matter that she was forced to live here, by the back wall, where not even the guards dared to step foot. Janice looked at the clean, good clothes her family wore, the table piled high with food, her lovely things and knew that it was all worth it. She threw on her coveralls, long blackened with soil and feces, tied a kerchief around her nose and kissed her husband goodbye before stepping out into the night. Joe was already waiting for her with the wagon. Janice clamored up next to her apprentice onto the box. Joe drove the brahmin toward the center of town towards their first stop for the night. 

The few people still out at this time of night quickly fled as they shambled down the street, their hands flying to their mouths as their faces turned green. Janice knew that she must have stunk to high heaven – and for the people who live in a place like Diamond City, that had once been affectionately termed as smelling like a billion molerats, that was saying something – but she had long since lost the ability to smell after having broken her nose in three places. A handy thing in her line of work. 

They came to the first set of outhouses and climbed down. Joe, a hearty boy of seventeen, opened up the door that led into the cesspit and used a ladder to climb down inside while Janice fetched the ropes and buckets. Janice had come from a long line of gong farmers – since the founding of Diamond City, even! Such was her illustrious lineage – and had been cleaning cesspits since the age of ten. Now it was Joe’s turn. She could barely see the top of Joe’s head as he waded through the thick sludge. Janice lowered down the first bucket. After Joe had filled it with feces, Janice then pulled it back up and dumped it onto the wagon. Once they had filled it, they would drive the brahmin out of the city and dump it in a run-down building. They would need to find a new building soon, after decades of dumping the mountain of shit had grown quite high so that it touched what was left of the roof. 

Janice lowered the bucket again but after a few minutes, nothing happened. “Joe?” She called out. No answer. She couldn’t see his head anymore. Fear gripped her and she raced down the ladder, jumping into the cesspit in search of the boy. Her body was swallowed up to her waist in dung and she trudged through, looking for any sign of him. There! He was slouching, like his knees were giving way, the effluent was up to his neck. He was in risk of drowning in shit. Janice grabbed him, giving him a hard shake. His face had grown blue, his breathing labored. He had been overcome by the noxious fumes of fermented waste: methane and carbon dioxide. She hauled him up, forced him to move up the ladder and once they reached the top he bent over and vomited on the ground. But he was alive.

* * *

**Necessaryman**

When Frank Fuller set up the first public chamber pot, it was a revolution to his business. His business being, of course, urine collecting.

He began as a small supplier to a number of local businesses: the washers, the tanners, and the metal workers were all in need of urine and they needed _a lot_ of it. The older, the better. With it they could make ammonia, useful in cleaning, tanning hides, and scouring rust from metal. But there was only so much that he could personally supply. But with his new water closets, the whole of New Reno could supply him with gallons of urine _for free_! Heck, maybe he could even start charging the citizens for the use of his chamber pots. One cap per piss. Sure, he’d lose out on all the guys who’d prefer to just whip it out and piss on the nearest building, but anyone who needed to actually drop trou and sit to piss wouldn’t have a choice but to pay up. 

Frank whistled to himself as he pushed his cart to the next water closet, already heavy with several cooking pots full of urine. He entered the closet and picked up the bucket, scowling at the sight of feces that lurked at the bottom. He had painted a sign on each closet that read “PISS ONLY” but, well, there were only so many folks who could read, and even less who cared. Frank took the lid of a cooking pot and pressed it against the top of the bucket to block the majority of the shit from spilling into his jars as he added the urine to his collection. He ignored the way it splashed against his clothes as he wrung out every last drop he could. He then flicked the shit that still clung to the bucket into the gutter before replacing the bucket. 

At the end of the long day, Frank pushed his cart home. He had set up shop in what used to be the National Automobile Museum. He loved the look of the pre-Corvega cars, even converted one into a bed. He dropped off his pots and jars, ready to be delivered in the morning, and walked past the rusted hulls of America’s once great beasts. Spread out across his work table were the long list of customers and payments, but he ignored all of that in favor of the blueprints he had found in the museum some years ago. They were dated to the 1820s and made by a man named Goldsworthy Gurney. He ran his eyes over the drawing, studying the detailed instructions of the Ammonia Engine. Imagine! Cars running on ammonia! With cars, they could travel the whole continent without fear of super mutants or deathclaws! And Frank would be at the front of it all, as the Emperor of Pee, the source of ammonia. Frank fell asleep on his table, dreaming of a time when he would rise up as the new James Chryslus.

**Author's Note:**

> Ammonia fuel engines are a real thing! They probably couldn't run on urine though.


End file.
